March 22, 2013, 10:30 p.m.
BETTER CARE: Vet Jeff Titmarsh with an injured grey kangaroo joey. Picture Max Mason Hubers
An injured joey.
A brushtail possum, being looked after by independent carers.
THE house built on Jennifer's suburban block does not look dissimilar to the other family homes on the street.
But the interior couldn't be more different.
Hanging in home-made slings, hopping gingerly between bedrooms and suckling specially prepared powdered milk in the kitchen, recuperating joeys have made this home their own under the watchful eye of licensed wildlife carer Jennifer, who asked that her real name not be used.
She has up to eight "kids", as she calls them, at one time, who often arrive as youngsters requiring intensive care after their mothers have been hit by a car.
Jennifer typically wakes at 5am and feeds the animals every two, three or four hours depending on their age, before going to bed at 1am.
"It's so much expense and there's so much involved, but it is a fantastic thing to do and gives you so much back."
BUT rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming injured native animals is not as straightforward as having an ample supply of love, time and enough cash for specific food, powders, and medication.
Behind the scenes the wildlife carer community across Lower Hunter and Port Stephens is splintered into hard-working groups, each of which has endured years of instability and faced accusations of lack of support and mismanagement.
On one hand, the group licensed to care for animals in the area - the Native Animal Trust Fund (NATF) - does not have enough members to look after all the region's injured wildlife. On the other hand a cluster of unlicensed carers mostly made up of disenfranchised former NATF members are risking state-government fines of possibly $11,000 per animal to supplement the service and help animals that may otherwise not survive.
Observers say the embroilment is a symptom of the need for widespread changes in the care of native wildlife across the state.
A shift may be on the horizon, with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) opening for the first time in decades the doors for a new licensed wildlife group to operate in the under-resourced Port Stephens area.
Up until June 30 it remains under the management of the NATF, which was established in 1978 and has about 180 unpaid volunteers as members.
It is the only group licensed by the NPWS to operate in the Lower Hunter region, including the southern end of Great Lakes and Dungog local government areas and the entire Cessnock, Maitland, Port Stephens, Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas.
The NATF area is bordered by five other groups, For Australian Wildlife Needing Aid to the north, Wildlife Aid in the west, Wildlife Animal Rescue & Care in the south and two koala groups, Koalas in Care and Hunter Koala Preservation Society at the north and eastern borders.
THE trust fund receives about 16,000 calls every year about virtually every kind of native animals, including kangaroos, birds, koalas, possums, bandicoots, echidnas and sea turtles.
"A lot of the injuries are from motor vehicles, a lot of them are from dogs and cat attacks, a lot of them are because of habitat destruction - they've become ill and displaced, a lot come in without their mother," said NATF chairwoman and founder Audrey Koosman.
To operate as a carer, members must apply to join the group, which holds the licence to rehabilitate and release sick, injured or orphaned native fauna. Once joined, members must attend a training course to learn about the responsibilities of a rehabilitator and basic rescue and care techniques.
When the course is completed, members are issued a written authority to operate under the terms of the group's licence.
Volunteers also pay all costs associated with medical treatment (including vaccination), transport, food, facilities, upkeep and protective clothing, although Koosman said the organisation has always had a policy of providing animal food and money for petrol to members in hardship.
The Herald reported on November 29 last year the NATF called a crisis meeting to deal with the shortfall in bird rehabilitators.
Koosman told the Herald after the meeting a working party or avian team had been formed to examine how to improve recruitment and supportfor members and develop a better strategy for next year.
But the Herald also heard from members wishing to remain anonymous who were frustrated with the lack of solutions to what they said was an annual crisis.
Some members went so far as to set up a website (wildlifefirst.com.au) outlining their grievances.
Others spoke of the organisation being slowly depleted over the past few years - particularly in the area from Raymond Terrace to Bulahdelah - by the departure of members who were tired of the lack of communication and an absence of financial and emotional support.
"They've got every right to think that if they wish," Koosman responded. "If that's what they felt, that's their opinion."
NATF members are divided into three groups: phone operators taking calls about injured wildlife, rescuers who transport the animals from injury sites to clinics, and carers who look after the animals in their homes.
Koosman said species co-ordinators organised the rescue, transport and placement of animals and the system "works quite well."
But NATF members who spoke to the Herald said the lack of access to a membership list left many carers unsure of other carers in their area who could help them if they were in need.
Some members estimate a turnover of about 80 per cent of membership in the past five years.
Koosman said a working party had been formed recently to investigate how to better support carers, including through the provision of money for petrol for carers who travel long distances.
But she refuted suggestions the trust fund was being depleted across Port Stephens, saying it had operated in the region for 35 years and was one of the organisation's strongest bases, with about 46 members.
As chair of the NSW Wildlife Council, she said every group in the state lacked members.
Meanwhile, the remaining licensed members say they are heavily burdened.
One said: "I'm burnt out and I know one woman with 34 birds - in that case they can't be looking after them properly".
Another had 118 animals in one month.
Amy said members are so busy trying to be both rescuers and carers that at times the phones are left unanswered.
Fern Bay resident Lorraine Yudaeff, a former Port Stephens councillor and past director of the Hunter Region Developmental Disability Service, said she had required assistance for animals on several occasions.
"I have tried to do the right thing originally and ring a licensed group, but there was always some reason why they couldn't do it," she said. "While I've stuffed around ringing the NATF, animals have died. I started using local contacts and found out other carers in the area."
Yudaeff said: "If a member of the public is good enough to pick an animal up they should be able to ring a number and get straight onto a service and there should be lots of them [available carers]."
Koosman said if NATF carers cannot come to rescue an animal they will speak to the caller about how to house an animal, which members of the public are legally allowed to do for three days without contacting NPWS.
THE NPWS completed an audit at the start of last year into the level of native animal rehabilitation provided by the trust fund after it heard concerns about the coverage of the organisation's service.
A spokesperson for the Office of Environment and Heritage said:"While the assessment team reported that carers demonstrated a high level of skill and dedication to the animals within their care, they also identified some aspects that require improvement."
The spokesperson said these aspects included the intermittent effectiveness of phone service, the incomplete coverage of the licence area in and around Karuah, Clarence Town and Raymond Terrace and minor breaches of the Section 120 [Native Animal Keepers'] licence.
The spokesperson said the NATF was asked to establish an action plan to address these issues but the office also formed the view that boundary adjustments were required.
NPWS advised the trust fund it would remove the area of NATF operations north of Newcastle and Maitland local government areas from its licence from June 30 this year.
"It's a political move," Koosman said. "We don't know what problems they came across . . .'We've got evidence we've worked well in those areas so I don't know where it's falling apart but they're saying they've got evidence it is."
The NPWS is seeking expressions of interest from neighbouring licensed groups to extend their boundaries.
But Koosman said NATF members in Port Stephens were "very upset, very distressed" and didn't want to work with any other group.
If neighbouring groups do not choose to extend their boundaries, NPWS will then either invite other licensed groups to open a new branch in the area or seek licence applications from prospective groups to operate in the area.
The invitation for applications has intrigued a band of unlicensed carers formerly of the NATF that applied for a licence in 2008.
They proposed more than five years ago to operate in the Port Stephens and Great Lakes area and had 80 members prepared to work alongside NATF, which was struggling to provide adequate service with its limited number of licensed caters north of Raymond Terrace.
"We were offering a release of pressure and we were happy to work alongside them," former NATF member Amy (who declined to be identified) said.
The NPWS refused the application, citing its policy of only one licensed group per area.
Instead, the NPWS broadened the trust fund boundary to the north and the FAWNA boundary to the south to meet at Bulahdelah, but there was still a significant lack of carers north of Hexham.
To fill this gap, more than 15 unlicensed carers - many formerly of NATF and some who were behind the push for the new group - continue to look after animals in secret.
Most of the unlicensed carers are also associated with Wildlife Rescue Inc, an independent call centre service (6699 3565), 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the rescue of native animals.
Amy said many unlicensed carers have maintained a working relationship with peers in the trust fund, giving them animals after the three-day holding period if necessary or in some cases taking animals off their already-full hands.
"The bottom line is there's nowhere else to send them," Amy said. "I'm not doing this just because I want to, I'm doing it because I have to."
The Office of Environment and Heritage spokesperson said while it is an offence under the National Parks and Wildlife Act (NPW Act) to capture, possess and if necessary put down sick and injured wildlife without a licence, there have been no fines issued to unlicensed wildlife carers in the Hunter Region to date.
But this doesn't mean there haven't been threats of financial penalty.
"They [officers] turned up on the doorstep and fortunately didn't come in but I had a car load full of animal food and parrots and they were screaming their head off and I remember shutting the door and thinking 'Oh my god'," Amy said.
Former Port Stephens councillor and owner for 36 years of Raymond Terrace Veterinary Clinic Jeff Titmarsh said reports of officers' visits "got my back up".
"It frightened the living daylights out of the carers, most of whom were grandmothers. It sort of gave us real pause because they're doing the knuckle dragging bit, the carers are looking after injured animals at their own expense," Titmarsh said. "If Parks and Wildlife prosecutes any of our carers then it's one in, all in, it's a civil disobedience campaign."
Titmarsh knows of about five official carers in the Port Stephens region and about 20 unofficial carers. He said he is happy to work with both groups but often finds unofficial carers provide better care, faster.
"I don't end up with animals in my clinic," he said. "If I was depending on the official carers I would have numbers of them but I farm them out sideways through unofficial carers and the system works really well."
Often they were the only obstacle standing between an animal's life or death.
Titmarsh said he had heard of vets being instructed by the NATF to euthanise animals if a member was unable to pick up an injured animal.
But Koosman said any reports of NATF encouraging vets to euthanise animals because they cannot be picked up were "lies". She said sometimes animals had to be euthanised due to the extent of their injuries.
Titmarsh said the reason the unofficial carer system worked so well was that it was based on a network of local people working on a smaller scale to help their neighbours.
"The injured animals find their way to the unofficial carers because they're known locally, not because they're part of a mega institution which happens to fit the bureaucratic needs of National Parks and Wildlife," he said.
His enthusiasm for a decentralised, community-based approach is shared by Yudaeff, who would like to see one emergency number for carers across the state and the dismantling of the borders of autocratic organisations.
"I think you need autonomous local cells so the people closest to the problem can sort it out," Yudaeff said.
She has been writing to ministers for the Environment and the NPWS through successive governments, campaigning for change.
"If a policy's not working, you change it," she said.
"What I would like to see is the Victorian system where they have a central committee that's got vets on it and wildlife carers and business people. Then they have localised groups around the area, they all work together, they're not playing tug of war."
On January 31 Yudaeff attended a meeting organised by Wildlife Rescue Inc founder Bernie Ashcroft and president Danella Weatherstone with Titmarsh, MP Robyn Parker's policy advisor and three officers from the NPWS to discuss threats of fines made against Ashcroft and the way forward.
Yudaeff said the NPWS officers indicated they believed their offer of the Port Stephens patch to an existing wildlife care group would not be accepted and had encouraged the formation of a new group.
"What they're saying is in fact this new group could be used as a pilot to improve governance issues," Yudaeff said.But she hopes it's not too little, too late.
"My concern is whether another group will form because the unlicensed carers are all so cheesed off," she said.
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